James Copestake

Professor of International Development, University of Bath

James Copestake is Professor of International Development at the University of Bath. His research interests include rural development and agrarian change; development finance, microfinance and aid management; definition and measurement of well-being and poverty; and the global political economy of development. James was Principal Investigator for the ESRC-DFID funded ‘Assessing Rural Transformations’ (ART) project. The ART consortium includes Evidence for Development alongside the University of Bath, Gorta Self Help Africa and Farm Africa, and seeks to broaden the range of credible and cost-effective evaluation methodologies available for assessing rural development interventions in complex contexts.

Selected EfD blog posts

Using public money to reduce global poverty is a tough enough ‘task’ even without having to account for each pound spent every five minutes. But aid professionals can hardly claim to be less susceptible to self-serving group-think than anyone else, and indeed the case for strong reality checks on aid expenditure will remain particularly strong...